A Tale of Teeth and Character

It is oh so lovely to be back at the WWK after a few weeks of being off and busy with my new baby. Thanks so much to Kait Carson for filling in—I really hope you enjoyed Kait’s posts as much as I did.

What have I been up to? Well, as any new mother will tell you, there’s a lot of time spent sitting around. My baby girl (as well as my son a few years ago) absolutely loves to strand me on the couch.

And I don’t mind, because baby snuggles are the best, even if I haven’t moved in three hours because I’m terrified of waking up the wee one. Though, honestly, because this is my second baby, I’m a little less terrified and more apt to get up/eat/shower/be a normal human being than I was with my first one.

That said, when I am on the couch, enjoying baby snuggles, my iPhone has been my very best friend. I didn’t have one with Baby No. 1, and I tell you, it’s done wonders in that I A. Don’t feel as alone (Thank you, text messages!) and B. Can catch up with what’s going on in the world.

Thus, while on the couch the other day, I read my friend Sarah Smarsh’s fabulous “Aeon” magazine piece about having poor teeth in rich America: http://aeon.co/magazine/health/the-shame-of-poor-teeth-in-a-rich-world/

You need to read the article because it’s fantastic, but, basically, Sarah does a fine job breaking down what imperfect teeth mean in our view of a person and how dental insurance and basic dental care often divide the classes in our country.

And, when we’re talking characters—in books, TV and the movies—most often if a character has bad teeth, he/she is a villain.

And it’s true.

Think about it.

Charlize Theron’s serial killer in “Monster.” The crazy Bible beater on “Orange is the New Black.” Any meth addict you’ve ever met in an episode of “CSI.”

In fact, the only character I can think of who was a hero and had purposely bad teeth is Austin Powers. But even then his teeth were awful mainly as an ongoing joke about the British and their famously horrible chompers.

When mulling this over as a writer, I can’t help but think about how in both books I’ve read and in my own writing, a love interest almost always has an amazing smile.

I’m not sure I’ve ever done this on purpose—in my mind’s eye, I just happen to see this handsome character with handsome teeth to match.

I didn’t realize I was saying something about his socio-economic class, but I suppose I was. My guys all have dental insurance and grew up flossing, whether I planned that or not.

What are subtle ways we define a character when we describe how he or she looks? Have you ever used a character's teeth as a tell?

Inside the Modern Jail

Today's guest blogger is Sally Carpenter who takes us inside a place most of us --well, actually I can't speak for you, I'll only speak for myself--a place I have no desire to spend very much time: jail.

~ Jim

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If you write crime novels, you might set a scene inside a jail. Do you know what a modern jail looks like or how it functions?

Jails are intended for short-term housing of up to one year only. Prisons are constructed for long-term housing of many years so they are larger and have more amenities. Juveniles are housed in other facilities designed for that population.

For about eight months in the mid 1990s while I was finishing my seminary studies, I was the jail chaplain intern at the DuPage County Jail in Wheaton, Ill. At the time the jail had just finished constructing new cells with better security that allowed women civilians on the floors.

The new cells were in a tower. The basement level housed the solitary confinement cells and the upper floors had the male general population (I’ll discuss the female inmates later). The top floor was for illegal immigrants.

Security cameras monitored the hallways and the elevators. A person approaching the elevator had to wait for the deputy watching on the camera to open the door by remote control.

On each floor the cells were arranged in “pods,” now the industry standard for new jails. A few years ago I visited the Ventura County (Calif.) Main Jail as part of a Citizens’ Academy program and that facility also used “pods.” This format provides deputies greater visibility and control over the inmates.

The center of the pod was the control room encased in bulletproof glass. A deputy sat inside and watched the inmates at all times. While on duty deputies were not allowed to do anything that would distract them such as reading or watching TV (nowadays I assume that prohibition includes texting and using a cellphone).

The cells, also made of glass, were in a row facing the pod center. Each cell had a bed, sink, toilet and shower for one man. The inmates used the toilet in full view and the small shower doors provided only a minimal amount of privacy. The deputy could see every action of each inmate. A speaker system allowed the deputy to listen in as well.

Inside the pod center was a panel where the deputy could open and close the cell doors. The deputy controlled access at all times. If a fight broke out, the deputy inside the control room would remain safe as he or she summoned help.

The cells opened into a recreation room that housed a TV high on the wall as well as tables and benches that were permanently bolted to the floor. During the daytime inmates, who were not confined to their cells, could go into the rec room if they choose. The deputy watched the activity inside this room as well. At night all inmates were “locked” inside their individual cells.

The only “windows” were small glassed-in slits just under the ceilings that let in a tiny amount of sunlight. The inmates couldn’t see anything outside the building.

A glass-walled meeting room, with a table and benches, was attached to the rec room. Again, the deputy controlled access to and from this room. Once a week I came to the room to lead a Bible study for the inmates. The deputy could see inside this room although I never had any trouble from the inmates. Some inmates came to the group just to break their daily monotony but most were genuinely interested in bettering themselves.

The inmates never left the floor except to go to court or as a group to the gym (the men lined up and moved through the hallway in a line with several deputies escorting them).

Meals were prepared in the kitchen, placed in individual covered trays, and then delivered to the floors on a wheeled cart. The inmates ate in the rec room or their cells. After eating, the dishes were collected and returned to the kitchen for washing.

Inmates called trustees did meal preparation and cleaning. Doing trustee work gave the men points to reduce their sentences. Many of the trustees enjoyed the job as they could get out of their cells, move around, and perform a useful task.

The deputies did not carry weapons. My supervisor suggested that I not carry my purse into the jail, so I locked my handbag in the trunk of my car. I was also told to never bring anything from the outside to give to an inmate, and never take anything from them.

A deputy told me that most of the men were in jail for one of two reasons: drugs or lack of education. The jail had a small library where the inmates could not only do legal research but also work on GED classes.

The female population was far smaller and was housed on two floors in the older section of the jail that did not have “pods.” These were the traditional-type dorm cells with bunk beds. The cell doors had steel bars, not glass. The interesting thing about the women is that they complained about their living conditions far more than the men did.

One thing I learned from this experience is how much we take our freedoms and privacy for granted. At the end of the workday I could leave the jail and drive home. The inmates didn’t have that luxury.

The chaplain program was run by the nonprofit organization JUST (justice, understanding, service, teaching) of DuPage that provided free Bibles and Qur’ans for inmates as well as worship services and educational programs. For more information, visit: http://www.kencygan.com/just3/

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Sally Carpenter is native Hoosier now living in Moorpark, California. She has a master’s degree in theater from Indiana State University. While in school her plays “Star Collector” and “Common Ground” were finalists in the American College Theater Festival One-Act Playwrighting Competition. “Common Ground” also earned a college creative writing award. “Star Collector” was produced in New York City and also the inspiration for her book.

Carpenter also has a master’s degree in theology and a black belt in tae kwon do. She’s worked a variety of jobs including actress, freelance writer, college writing instructor, theater critic, jail chaplain, and tour guide/page for a major movie studio. She’s now employed at a community newspaper.

Her first book in the Sandy Fairfax Teen Idol mystery series, “The Baffled Beatlemaniac Caper,” was a 2012 Eureka! Award finalist for best first mystery novel. The second book, “The Sinister Sitcom Caper,” is due out in late 2013. Her short story, “Dark Nights at the Deluxe Drive-in,” will be published in the 2013 SinC/LA anthology, “Last Exit to Murder.”

She’s a member of Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles chapter and “mom” to two black cats. Contact her at Facebook or scwriter@earthlink.net.

A SENSE OF PLACE

                                                                                  

A sense of place is important to a story and if you create one a reader can see, hear and experience, they will believe in what happens in your story.

In yesterday’s interview with Amanda Flower, she discussed why she chose the setting she did, and because she’s familiar with the places where she sets her books, they are believable to the reader. But although it helps to be familiar with the setting, it is not necessary if you use details of the surroundings, time of day and year and other aspects that set the mood.

Recently I finished The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. The book begins with the following open scene.

“The small boys came early to the hanging. It was still dark when the first three or four of them sidled out of the hovels, quiet as cats in their felt boots. A thin layer of fresh snow covered the little town like a new coat of paint, and theirs were the first footsteps to blemish its perfect surface. They picked their way through the huddled wooden huts and along the streets of frozen mud to the silent marketplace, where the gallows stood waiting.”

The book starts with a dark cold morning. The homes are hovels or huts so already the mood is set for a dark novel with time of day and year and place. It is locked in with the last five words.

Although Follett didn’t use a limited sense of place, much of it took place in a monastery, but even in that monastic setting, one never quite felt safe. A monk, Phillip, is a major character and following is his first view of the monastery Kingsbridge, which became almost like a character in its own right.

“Kingsbridge overawed him at first. The walled monastery was bigger than many villages; the cathedral church was a vast, gloomy cavern; the prior’s house a small palace . . . the church was visibly in need of major repairs.”

Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael series takes place in the same time period with King Steven and the Empress Maud waging war to be the ruler, but although she doesn't ignore the brutality and bloodshed, she doesn't go into graphic details. In the first chapter of One Corpse too Many, this early scene shows the monastery as a more tranquil place.

"Come, see what manner of labour you're taking on yourself," said Cadfael cheerfully, and downed his spade to take the new boy around the enclosed garden, showing him the vegetables, the herbs that made the noon air heady and drunken with fragrance, the fish ponds and the beds of pease that ran down almost to the brook. The early field was already dried and flaxen in the sun, all the harvest gathered, even the later-sown hung heavy and full of pod."

Notice how not only the cheerful Brother Cadfael, but the time of day and year creates a lighter mood. Although by the title the reader knows it's going to be a mystery with dead bodies, one still doesn't feel the underlying horror one felt from the first scene in the Follett book.

 

And now a scene from a monastery in northern Quebec in Louise Penny’s latest book A Beautiful Mystery. It’s autumn and so far north that it’s earlier here. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir are being taken by boat to an isolated monastery to investigate a death. It’s a closed isolated monastery that never opens its doors to visitors. The following passage sets the mood.

“At the end of the bay a fortress stood, like a rock cut. Its steeple rose as though propelled from the earth, the result of some seismic event. Off to the sides were wings. Or arms. Open in benediction, or invitation. A harbor. A safe embrace in the wilderness. A deception. This was the near mythical.”

This is a strong sense of place with a mystery attached. One feels this will be nothing like the Benedictine Abby of Saint Peter and Paul that was Brother Cadfael's home. Instead one gets a sense there's something sinister behind those walls. 

In all three settings I’ve described, the atmosphere and mood work to get the reader interested. The first a sense of horror, the second a sense of a quiet tranquil place, and the third a sense of apprehension.

A well woven plot and believable characters are important to any story, but so is the sense of place against which the plot and characters are woven and sometimes writers seem to overlook the importance of sense of place.

In what book or books did you find the sense of place quite strong?

If you’re a writer, what setting do you use for your book or books?

 

How Do You Use Light?

Moonlight seen from the deck

As I write this blog, a mild breeze shivers the leaves of the trees between our house and the lake and causes the evening light to dance on the water. Most of the leaves are still green, and the light shines from slightly north of west. In three weeks the leaves will be yellows, oranges, reds and browns; the sunset will appear due west. It was just such a day fifteen years ago we first walked the land we now call home.

Early Autumn

In her interviews fellow blogger E. B. asks as a bonus question, “Beach or mountains?” My answer would be first “yes” and then “no.” In my fantasies as a young adult, I dreamed of retiring to three homes. One in high mountains to avoid summer’s heat; a second on a remote northern lake for spring and fall; the third on an ocean beach for winter.

As financial reality (and the impracticality of taking care of multiple residences by one who thinks home repairs are much closer to death by hanging on the scale of punishments than to a day in a jail) I only own one of those dreams. I could have chosen any of the three, but I picked the remote northern lake.

I think it is because of the light.

Mountain retreats or oceanfront property provide the opportunity for horizon-length vistas. One could probably find such a long view in the big sky country of Montana for less cost, but that never appealed to me. In time, I learned that while long views can inspire me, I want to live day-to-day in a world of varied light. Shadows of the natural world are as important to me as the light itself.

In uniform light, a picture, or the world itself, lacks depth. A character in a novel illuminated only with flood lamp details is featureless, washed out, uninteresting. Only in the shadows can you see the wrinkles from years of squinting or over-tanning skin into leather.

Reflected Sunset

We have a dock from which we can watch the lake without the interference of tree trunks, branches and leaves. Guests often use it, but I rarely do other than for swimming. One of our neighbors has gone so far as to cut down almost all his trees to provide a “pristine” view of the lake. I find myself choosing the partially occluded view from the house deck in preference to the unobstructed view from the dock. I can watch waves through the gaps between trees; see a duck swim by and wait for it to appear in the next opening. From my perch I observe birds flitting from tree to tree. I catch the shadow of an eagle flying overhead.

Porch late afternoon

As leaves lose their battle to gravity and drop from branch to ground, the woods open up. At the same time, the sun is lower in the sky and trees cast longer shadows. Jan claims this view as her favorite time of year for light, but only, I think, because autumn is now approaching. If asked in early spring she would exalt over the woods seen in new light and the variety of greens the woods use to cloak themselves in leaf-wear.

Maybe I have chosen the wooded lakeshore because bright light hurts my eyes. Maybe I am fooling myself with my preference for subtlety and the shadow side of things. I don’t think so; I suspect the desire to understand the impact of shadow explains why I write mysteries.

 ~ Jim

You can’t just call them seagulls anymore

I’m a bird watcher; Jan is not, but bit by bit that is changing as my habits rub off on her. She, of course, is still waiting for the day when her neatness habit rubs off on me.

When we are in Savannah we like to walk the winter beach. Mostly devoid of people, the beach allows us a pleasant meander, and I get to watch the birds through binoculars or a scope. A few years ago she pointed at a bird flying past and asked what kind of seagull it was. It seemed different to her, and it was different—it was a tern, not a gull.

I hauled the bird book from the back of my pants and flipped to the page with Forster’s Tern in winter plumage. 

From Peterson's A Field Guide to the Birds

I showed her the markings, we looked at other possibilities and she concluded it was indeed a Forster’s Tern. I then flipped to the gull portion of the book and pointed out the differences in wing shape and beaks between terns and gulls. Terns have narrower wings than gulls and their beaks tend to be sharply pointed; gulls’ beaks are often hooked. Relative to their overall size, gulls have longer legs than terns.

The differences relate primarily to feeding. Terns fish for dinner by diving straight into the water and catching fish. Gulls are scavengers (thank you landfills for their geographical expansion) and when they fish they do it in a swooping manner. Sometimes they’ll land on the surface and paddle around like a duck. Gulls, not terns, are the pests who come begging at your picnic.

For a while, that’s where we left it. Jan figured out which birds were gulls and which were terns. Then one day a small gull and large gull were standing together. They were not parent and child, but Herring Gull and Ring-billed Gull. Viewed together their size difference is significant. 

From Peterson's A Field Guide to the Birds

Seen separately in winter they do look similar, although Herring Gulls have pinkish legs and Ring-billed Gulls have yellow-green legs. But to know which is which when only one is present, you need to look for the differences or have a good ingrained sense of bird-size. Just as Jan was getting good at distinguishing Herring Gulls from Ring-billed Gulls a third common winter gull in Savannah showed up: the Laughing Gull.

As Jan continued to watch she realized that not only did terns behave differently than gulls, but each of the gull species had different behavioral characteristics as well. That’s when she commented that, “You can’t just call them seagulls anymore.”

For me, that realization is where the fun really starts. Until that discovery, naming a bird is more akin to attaching a label to something to gain mastery over it, a habit in which we homo sapiens excel. Afterward recognizing individual differences, the birds become friends. Oh yes, you remember, the Herring Gulls often stand farther away from the surf than Laughing Gulls and you can get nearer to them before they frighten. You can watch for hours the way Forester Terns fold their wings just so before diving.

When you read a story and it talks about a flock of seagulls, you want to know what kind because you are unwilling to settle for just calling them seagulls anymore. And if a writer describes a sleek bird with pointy wings and beak diving into the water as a seagull and not a tern, you immediately lose respect for the writing—even if it has no effect on the story and a tern would have done just as well as a seagull.

I like nature and so tend to feature it in my writing. I only include animals I have observed myself because unlike characters, I can’t invent them out of whole cloth. This fanaticism on my part will limit the geography of my stories, but I’m comfortable with the tradeoff – and did I mention I’m planning a futuristic novel where I’ll have no constraints.

Question for you: Does it bother you when writers get something wrong, and if so, what bothers you the most?

~ Jim

The Sense of Scents

Spring came a month early this year, and while most people enjoyed the warmer weather, it made me a little nervous. I wondered if the speeding up of nature's natural rhythem would cause a problem. I recently discovered one. The lilacs. Normally as I go down my brick walkway to and from my back door during May, I enjoy the sweet smell of lilacs. Now I'm missing the heavenly scent of lilacs in bloom because they budded out too soon this year, and were damaged by a killer freeze. All I have are some pathetic stunted ones up too high to bother with. It's a smell full of memories going back to the lilacs blooming by the house where I grew up and at my grandparents' farm across the road. It's the old-fashioned lilacs that have the very best smell, and I was fortunate when I bought my century farm house over twenty years ago because it came with old lilacs. They're so tall that I need a step ladder to pull down the higher branches to snip lilacs for bouquets. I never want to cut the lower ones because I like to smell those as I pass by. Hopefully soon I'll at least be enjoying the smell of roses. So far they don't seem to be damaged.

                                                                             
 So many smells are tied to memories. The delicious smell of turkey roasting always brings memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Both are special holidays filled with fun and laughter. Now in the dessert category there are too many to list them all. One is apple pie, apple crisp, or anything apple with cinnamon. Then there's pumpkin pie and everything chocolate. While I'm on food, bread baking in the oven is high on my list, and pizza, too. Pot roast brings back memories of Sunday dinner since it was served often on Sundays. My dad usually cooked on that day. Are you drooling yet? A visit to the county fair or any festival causes olfactory overload: hot sausage sandwiches next to elephant ears, corn dogs, french fries, lemonade stands, cotton candy, kettle corn, and the list goes on and on. As for deep fried Twinkies or Oreos, I'd never try them.

Other pleasant smells tied with memories are clothes dried on the line. Nothing is more pleasant than crawling between fresh sun dried sheets at night. Working in my herb garden is my favorite place to weed. There's the smell of fresh mown grass or new bales of hay in my barn. Add to the list campfires or bacon cooking, especially when camping, a walk in the woods under pine trees or scuffling through leaves in the fall. Another scent I like that is fast disappearing due to environmental concerns is autumn leaves burning in the fall. I love the smell of baby powder or the fresh smell of rain, but not  the smell of earthworms washed out of their burrows.

Of course, there are many smells I don't like: the chemical smells of weed killers or insecticides in stores, anyone who puts on too much perfume or aftershave, cigars, bleach, litter boxes, wet dogs, mildew, fishy smells and skunks - but that is a story for another time.

As important as our sense of smell is, it's not included in books as much as visual descriptions or sounds. When pondering this, I decided it's because our visual sense is always active unless we're sleeping or it's dark. The same is true with our hearing. As I write this I'm listening to Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" on the radio while a storm is rumbling outside and cars are swishing by on wet pavement. There's also the sound of dripping inside the wall reminding me I need to call somebody about repairing the chimney. But while I hear and see what's around me, I'm not aware of any smells since supper was some time ago, the dishes have been washed and because of the lilac problem, I have no fresh bouquets of lilacs in the house.

Although I try to include the sense of smell in my writing, I know it's not as much as it could be, or does it really need to be that much? I don't know if readers are especially aware of the inclusion of it or even the lack of it.

How much to you use smells in your writing?
What are your favorite smells especially those connected to memories.